Most Self-Aware TV Show: New Girl

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Last night in the land of TV for women that's also for men, New Girl reached a new high in meta-humor. I don't mean stunt casting, though it's hard to complain whenever Megan Mullally is opposite real-life husband Nick Offerman on Parks and Recreation. And I don't mean the kind of in-joke in which Charlie Sheen plays someone with anger-management issues. (We all know that was never his biggest problem.) New Girl capitalized on a phenomenon that has become so well-known that a magazine cover has been devoted to it: Zooey Deschanel's appeal to a certain demographic of younger, twee city dwellers. Where once the show dutifully played into this idea (see: jam T-shirt, now available for purchase, naturally, on Tumblr), it now openly acknowledges and subverts it.

On the "Neighbors" episode, a group of twenty-somethings in gaudy sweatshirts moves across the hall from the main characters and immediately takes a shine to Deschanel: her cascading waves of hair, her Urkel and Full House impressions, her casserole from her new job at the Casserole Shanty. The whole thing is a ukulele and a Michael Cera appearance away from Saturday Night Liveparody. And by mocking Deschanel's fan base, it also sort of compliments them. See? You can laugh, too.